AIDAN

Taking a deep, relaxing breath, I walked toward the girls. “Alright senoritas, y’all ready to go?” They both turned around smiling, caught in mid-excitement. Their gaze moved back and forth from me to each other. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

Nadia adjusted the straps on her bra-top, lifting her ample bosom. “No, Chris texted us from the parade route. He wants the four of us to ride on a float with him when we meet up. Thank God I wore my good bra.”

I bit my bottom lip and ran a hand through my hair. “I don’t know guys. I mean, that sounds like fun, but I’ve had a long day.”

Lana flipped her hair to one side, trying to angle herself for another selfie. “Too bad. Chris really needs us to fill the float.”

Nadia waved a hand at me. “Don’t worry. We’ll get a couple more shots in you and you’ll be good to go.”

A couple of shots turned into four rounds. I was going to be sloshed while staring down at hundreds of eyeballs. We said goodbye to Brad and left the bar.

Lana was squinting at her phone as she directed. "Okay, we just have to grab a streetcar from N. Rampart to Canal and then it's just a few minutes to get there.” She finished by nearly tripping over one of the thousands of cracks in the sidewalk. "Chris said to meet him right by the Hotel Modern. Oh, god. Remember the last time we were there, Nadia? With those two Swedish guys?

We turned onto a street I wasn't familiar with, but Nadia didn't even notice. “Oh, yeah. I punched that guy so hard, but he said that’s what got him going. Put a whole new meaning to getting some strange. And speaking of strange, Aidan, Lana and I are gonna make sure you get some tonight.” Nadia deepened her voice. “Because it's been a cold, cold winter.”

I scowled at her. “Thank you, but I think you kept warm enough for the both--.”

“I can’t wait to taste you.”

My eyes widened as I stopped walking. “What the hell?” Turning around to survey the area, there was no one else around.

Nadia snapped her fingers. “Yo, what's the holdup?”

“Thought I heard something.”

Continuing down the sidewalk, I was focused on watching my step when it happened again.

“I won’t stop till you’re all dead.”

I glanced at the girls but neither were speaking. Keeping my pace with theirs, I tried to ignore whatever was happening to me.

“You’re going to scream for me.”

“Okay!” I planted my feet. “You guys seriously don’t hear that?”

Nadia stopped and raised an eyebrow. “Hear what? What are you talking about?”

“So close!”

I jumped at the volume of the voice. “That! Y’all don’t hear that voice?”

Nadia stepped closer to me and raised her hand to my forehead. “Aidan, are you feel--.”

From above, a woman landed dead center of us and roundhouse kicked Nadia. The blow sent her flying down the street until she was out of sight. In shock, my gaze locked onto her petite appearance, though her heels almost put her at my height. They were eight inches high and covered with long metallic spikes. She wore a leather jacket and matching hot pants. Her black as night locks were pulled into a tight ponytail with a hair tie, also, made of spikes. She spun around and landed another kick right into my torso. The impact was so hard, I thought she might have kicked right through me until I crashed into a nearby SUV.

I hit the center of the vehicle causing it to fold in, leaving me trapped in the middle of a metal sandwich. I laid very still, too afraid to find out if parts of me were broken, impaled, or gone.

Even though there was no way to see past my containment, I could still hear Lana pleading with Hot Pants. Even stranger, I tasted something when I focused on her sobs. The more Lana cried out, the tastier the flavor became. Fear. It was like a juicy steak in my mouth. After shaking off the sensation, I tried to calm my heavy breathing. I was struggling to escape my confines that would have pulverized a normal person. My newly acquired strength was useless since I couldn’t move my arms.

Hot Pants whispered in a voice as sexual as it was sinister. “I can't wait to scrape you out of my teeth,” Lana screamed and I couldn’t take anymore. With every bit of physical and mental strength within me, I focused on the makeshift cage. Instead of the car budging or my body moving, blood rushed to my head followed by the sensation of being caught in an undertow. The next second, I was in the middle of the street behind Hot Pants. Lana’s eyes were a pool of panic as our attacker held her by the throat.

I reached my mind out like an invisible limb and spun the woman around, releasing Lana in the process. Lana fell to the ground, but my concentration stayed locked on the woman. With her facing me now, I could see why Lana was so scared. The woman had rows upon rows of serrated teeth lining the inside of her stretched-out funnel mouth.

I gasped and then screamed. “Oh! Jesus Christ! What the hell are you?!” Almost instinctively, my mind lifted and pinned Hot Pants to the wall. From my peripheral, I caught Lana staring at me with her mouth open. My gaze stayed on our attacker. “Lana, go check on Nadia. I'll deal with this.”

She ran in the direction Nadia had landed while I started thinking. I needed something I could use against Hot Pants to get some answers. Something slow. That’s when I really noticed her mouth. Bingo. Once the image was locked in my brain, I raised a hand towards the woman's leg. My palm split open into a hole of serrated teeth before the skin stretched outward and blackened. I tried not to listen to the squelching, otherwise, I was going to lose my focus. Once the huge worm finished forming, it lunged from my hand and, with a slippery sound, wrapped its spike-covered body around the woman’s leg. “Dear. God. That was disgusting.”

“I am yours to command, master. Will me as you wish.” My eyes glanced at the large worm and it nodded its lamprey mouth at me.

“This just can't get more disturbing.” I envisioned what I wanted the imp to do in my mind and snapped my fingers. The spikes on its body protruded three times longer into the leg. The woman screamed and my mouth involuntarily turned up into a smile. “That’s for kicking the crap out of me and my best friend.” I stopped smiling when the women's unnaturally long tongue caressed her teeth. “This whole nonsense of you people coming after the stone, or Nexus, or whatever has got to stop.”

For a brief moment, one of her eyebrows raised before her teeth receded row by row until her face was normal. She seemed ready to say something, but instead, bit down on her tongue and spat blood onto my face. Something in me snapped, and I needed to see more blood. Her blood. I wiped my face and smiled from ear to ear. “Fine.” With another snap of my fingers, the worm spun at a blurring speed around her leg. I put my palm out and an invisible force blocked the chunks from hitting me. After a few minutes of her screams, I snapped my fingers again and the imp stopped. What was left of the woman’s leg was a bloody, meaty mess of mostly visible bone. My mouth fell open. “Oh, god. Why did I do that?” My regret vanished when the tendons, muscles, and skin regrew within seconds. Her expression looked like she wanted to sink her teeth in me and rip something out.

My eyes were as wide as they could go. “Okay. You have every right to be mad. I did not set a good example for handling the situation. But let’s not forget who started all of this in the first place.” Her lower lip curled back the same time Lana and Nadia stepped came into view. Glancing at them, Nadia was somehow okay. A huge sigh of relief escaped me. I wanted to run over to hug them but turned my attention back to my captive. “Alright, we need to speed this whole thing up. Seriously. Who are you and why do you and all your people want this necklace? It doesn’t even do anything.” The woman looked into my eyes and smiled. My focus had slipped. She tapped her heel on the wall and one of the spikes flew off, lodging itself in my gut.

Taking a step back, I fell and lost my hold over the woman. “Oh! It’s in me!”

She ripped the worm off of her leg and smashed it with her shoe. While extending her teeth, she quickly stepped toward me. From my left, a beam of electricity blasted her into a light pole. My eyes followed the stream and saw Nadia’s eyes crackling as she fried the woman. The light at the top of the pole flickered until finally exploding.

Nadia eventually stopped and the woman's smoking body fell face down on the ground. Having failed to get answers from her mouth, I tried, instead, going through her mind. I clenched my fists, overwhelmed with a myriad of carnage and destruction. I was lost in the sea of blood that was her mind. Before pulling out, I managed to find something near the surface. “Egestas a Tenebris.”

Hot Pants pushed off the street and was gone in a blur.

Her speedy retreat was the least of my worries. I looked down at the spike lodged in my stomach. “This is going to suck so much.”

The girls rushed to my side, both with looks of horror and disgust painted on their faces.

Lana didn’t hesitate to kneel beside me. “Okay, Aidan, look at me, I need you to lie very still while I call the paramedics. Under no circumstances can we touch the--.”

Nadia grabbed the spike with both hands and pulled it out of me.

I screamed at the top of my lungs. “You bitch!”

Nadia dropped the metal object, being careful not to get any blood on her white jeans. “Oh, hush. Y’all gonna be fine.”

Lana was freaking out more than I was, using her hands to try to cover the wound. “Somebody, give me something to stop the bleeding. We have to put pressure on it till the EMT arrives!”

I gabbed Lana’s shoulder to get her to make eye contact. “Hun, it’s okay. Really.”

She shook her head, tears running down her face. “No. That’s the shock and adrenaline talking. If it pierced your intestines, you could get sep—wait.” Her head bent closer to my abdomen. “It--it's not bleeding anymore.”

The girls helped me stand, and after a few more minutes of trying to calm Lana down, we showed her my wounds again. They had already started to heal.

Nadia frowned and waved a hand at me. “Boy, Imma need you to buckle up that vest. I don’t care if it’s tight. Don’t nobody wanna be looking at that gash.”

I did as she instructed and shrugged my shoulders. “Guess it’s a good thing I wore all black.” I turned to Lana. “So, since that’s out of the way, Nadia and I should probably explain a few things.”

She was shaking, eyes wide and lips trembling. “What the hell was all of that?! I mean, that crazy bitch had shark teeth and then you appeared out of thin air and pinned her to the wall without even touching her!” She turned to Nadia and stepped back. “And you! You shot electricity out of your hands and blew up a light pole!”

Nadia was wide-eyed and, for once, at a loss for words. I moved closer to Lana but she put her hands up to stop me. “No! Don’t touch me! I nearly died and then you got stabbed, but you’re somehow fine!” She dropped to her knees and started weeping.

Nadia and I slowly knelt down next to her and gently placed hands on her back. She didn’t try to push us away but her body was rigid.

All I wanted was for her to be okay. Lana had been my first friend in high school, always watching out for me. She always had my back. I needed to be there for her now. “Everything is alright. You’re safe now.”

She lifted her head, face twisted in confusion. Her gaze looked from Nadia to me. “That’s really weird. I think—I think I’m alright.”

Nadia stood and backed away. “No, what’s weird is Aidan just said all of that without moving his mouth.”

Eyes wide, I helped Lana to stand while staring at them. “What are you talking about?”

Nadia clapped after each word. “You told us everything is alright but your mouth never moved!”

Lana looked just as surprised as I did. “Wait, that was in my head? Did you just use your mind to calm me down?”

I threw my hands in the air. “I have no idea. These stupid powers didn’t come with an instruction manual!”

Nadia raised a finger to me and placed her other hand on her hip. “I. Don’t. Care. There is only room for one voice in my head and it had better be mine.”

Lana smoothed out her skirt and straightened her hair. “All I know is, somebody needs to buy me a very large top-shelf drink.”

Nadia picked up her clutch from where it had fallen after she was kicked. “Make that two. In case y’all missed it, I just got knocked the hell out.”

I tilted my head. “How are you okay? I mean, that chick kicked you onto a whole other block.”

Nadia brushed off her clothes and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I blacked out after she kicked me. The next thing I knew, Lana’s scared ass was waking me up. Now, come on.” She waved us along. “We gotta run back to the bar to wash this dirt and blood off so we can meet up with Chris.”

I shook my head and raised my hands. “No, guys. Come on. We just got attacked. We need to go home and regroup.”

Nadia crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Girl, we are not going home. After the nonsense you and I have gone through, we deserve this night. Okay? For all we know, things might only get worse from here on out.” She raised her voice. “So, god as my witness, we are going to drink and party and have a good ass time. Now, let’s go.”

I cocked my head back in shock. “Alright, geez. Whatever. It’s only my birthday. On a more disturbing note, I peeked inside that woman’s mind, and let me tell you, it was like Faces of Death. Also, I heard ‘Egestas a Tenebris.’ So, yeah. Pretty sure this is one for Mr. Serious.” I gave Nadia a knowing look.

Lana was using her phone as a mirror. "What’s a Mr. Serious? Is that an app?"

Nadia and I used the walk back to the bar to tell Lana the whole truth. The cat was out of the bag and there was no going back. Whatever I had done to her seemed to have put her in a more rational frame of mind. “So, your imps talk to you? That’s got to be pretty weird.”

A shudder ran down my spine at the memory of the worm’s guttural voice. “I’m not ready to talk about how disturbing that was.”